


unfinished

by benshaws



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Depression, M/M, Suicide, Violence, death mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 05:53:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2954657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benshaws/pseuds/benshaws
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some unfinished pieces from the Les Mis fandom - all marked with summaries and pairings beforehand. Includes unfinished pieces from 'We Were Based On An End'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	unfinished

****name:** **[we were based on an end **  
**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/893826/chapters/1725564) ** **pairing:** ** enjolras x grantaire (+ others) **  
 **summary:** ** unfinished scenes from we were based on an end **  
 **warnings:** ** same warnings apply as for the original

“Before reunification what was the capital of West Germany?” The quiz master asks, soon followed by Courfeyrac snarling, “What the fuck” over the table at them.  
  
“I have no fucking clue,” Courfeyrac announces, a little too loudly, and flops back in his seat. Beside him, Bahorel throws him a look over his beer.  
  
“We should really play poker more often,” He tells him, a grin forming. “You’re ridiculously shit at hiding anything. How the fuck did you conceal your creepy obsession-crush for Jehan for months?”  
  
“I am here you know,” Jehan reminds them, but he’s smirking, idly doodling on the edge of the answer sheet as Courfeyrac shrugs a shoulder.  
  
“Bad luck,” He says, with a sigh, drooping sideways to rest his head on Jean’s shoulder.  
  
“It’s Bonn,” Grantaire remembers, after puzzling over the question throughout their conversation. Courfeyrac sways back the way he came, sitting upright and leaning over the table.  
  
“You sure?”  
  
As Grantaire nods, returning to getting drunk, Courfeyrac writes the answer down. Beside him, Bahorel gives Grantaire a look. “How the fuck did you know that?” He asks.  
  
Witheringly, Grantaire makes a face around a mouthful of beer, swallowing it down to say, “I did two years of history A Levels. Ask me about France, I dare you. I know fucking everything about France.”  
  
If Bahorel was going to, however, he doesn’t get a chance, as the quiz master asks the next question and Courfeyrac excitedly falls on the piece of paper with the answer.  
  
Looking sideways Combeferre catches Grantaire’s gaze and smiles before Enjolras says something in his ear which has him turning to look at the other. Grantaire downs the remnants of his glass and runs a hand down his face, bitterly.  
  
Thirty minutes later, with the answers back, they find out Courfeyrac has lost this round, with Combeferre taking the lead. Basically meaning that Courfeyrac has regressed to the mentality of a five year old and is pouting, sat on top of Combeferre & Team’s table, swinging his legs back and forth and generally causing a fuss.  
  
With Bahorel paying for their drinks and chatting up the newest bartender, Jehan and Grantaire are alone at their table. Gently, Jehan catches his elbow, causing Grantaire to turn and look at him.  
  
“You okay?” He asks him, voice dipping softly as Grantaire swallows down the last dregs of his latest drink.  
  
“Careful,” Grantaire says slowly, with meaning, while brandishing a smile that he’ll let Jehan decipher himself. “Enjolras might think you’re in love with me.”  
  
In reply, Jehan slowly raises an eyebrow then slides his gaze pointedly over to where Enjolras is sitting, squashed between Combeferre and Fueilly. “Is that what he thinks?”  
  
“No, he just thinks I’m in love with you,” Grantaire informs him, playing with the rim of his glass and catching Jehan’s gaze again.  
  
Jehan recoils slightly, offended, smiling. “Aren’t you?”  
  
Acting along Grantaire smirks, drawling, “Oh, head over heels, love.”  
  
“Shame about my boyfriend,” Jehan grins, finishing his own drink and settling back in his seat. Grantaire watches his expression become thoughtful and sighs, pressing his fingers into one of his temples.  
  
“Don’t say anything to him,” Grantaire says, almost a plea. “I don’t need to be protected or any of that bullshit and it’s not like everyone doesn’t know about us anyway.”  
  
Jehan’s gaze flickers out of his revere and he looks at Grantaire steadily across the table. “I wouldn’t,” He confirms, quickly squeezing Grantaire’s hand, to which Grantaire offers him a thin smile.  
  
“Grantaire,” A voice whines in his ear, familiar hands pressing into his shoulders. “I totally need a pity lift,” Courfeyrac tells him, kneading his shoulders and leaning his chin on the crown of his head.  
  
With an eye roll Grantaire rolls himself from out underneath the table and gestures, languidly, to his lap. Almost instantly Courfeyrac falls on top of him, wriggling there to get comfy. Across the room, Enjolras is looking at them as Courfeyrac kisses Jehan’s knuckles then pulls him toward the wheelchair, causing Jehan to almost sprawl over them in the process, and Grantaire does what he does poorly - what he’s been trying to do all night - and ignores him.  
  
—  
  
Eponine, who has been positioned in Marianne’s kitchen for the last fifteen minutes now, rolls her eyes up to the ceiling and crosses her arms, pointedly. “I came down to see you,” She tells Grantaire, as he holds her gaze, exasperated, from the other side of the room. “So I’m coming with you.”  
  
He groans, sliding his fingers through his hair and staring past her at the door. “It’s not really an open event,” Grantaire explains, but he already knows it’s useless. Both Eponine and Grantaire are pushers, with the shared understanding that they’re allowed to shove one another just a little harder than anyone else. Whatever boundaries they had were bulldozed down a long time ago.  
  
“It’s at the local college,” Eponine interjects, unimpressed but uncrossing her arms. “It’s community art therapy, Grantaire, not like I’m sitting in on your psych sessions.”  
  
Knowing he’s already lost this battle Grantaire just gestures toward the door, earning him a grin.  
  
“Glad we’re on the same page,” Eponine quips, practically skipping to the door as Grantaire despondently eyes her back.  
  
“I hate you,” He tells her, lacking in any spite or force, then trails after her, perhaps not as bothered as he should be. Art therapy /isn’t/ his psych sessions, that usually leave him with suicidal urges and pounding migraines. Instead, it was the process of relearning how paint worked on paper, and the manipulation of pastels, and how to make the lines just right.  
  
Grantaire had loved art once, although he had left school with a shitty art grade. It wasn’t that he wasn’t good, he had just never listened. His art teachers had wanted some perfect 19th Century piece that was exact to the last detail. Being Grantaire, he had wanted chaos and passion, longed to dash colours onto canvases, imitate the mess of human life - so he had, something which his school hadn’t taken well.  
  
Yet, ultimately, Grantaire had been in love with dance. Consequently, all the stupid qualifications he had worked for had just been a way to pass the time of his lazy teenage years, so he hadn’t particularly cared all that much. Art, like most other things, had become lost to him when he began dancing professionally, going home with aching bones from long rehearsal sessions. Back then the only hobbies he had pursued had been watching TV and sleeping.  
  
Surprisingly, most of all to him, he enjoyed picking up art again, cramped into a room with people just, if not more, fucked up than himself. More so when he was told the only regulation was not to do any art which wrecked the carpet.  
  
He doesn’t feel bothered about letting Eponine into that world and if he does, fleetingly, it was only because Grantaire sometimes found himself smiling with messy patches of colour smeared across his forearms and Grantaire did not want to have to carry the weight of that happiness or be required to live up to the expectations of those fleeting moments of forgetfulness.  
  
Marianne drives them there, asking Eponine very polite questions about where she lives, and how she got into dance, and how she’s enjoying her time at the ABC. Without incident, Eponine answers her questions, but her responses are cold, clipped, and Grantaire can’t help but feel a swell of affection in his chest at her tone, knowing full well why. Eponine knew the full extent of his shitty relationship with his mother. Combeferre and Jehan knew a lot too, but she had been privy to the whole picture, late one night when Grantaire was breaking, and drinking, sobs sounding ripped from his chest. The ABC had guessed the rest, filled in the blanks with their own imagination, the primary reason why they hadn’t recoiled in outrage all those weeks ago at Grantaire screaming at his mother, calling her by her first name.  
  
Beside her, in the back seat, Grantaire grabs hold of her hand mid-answer to one of those questions, suddenly feeling nostalgic and warm. She looks at him, with a frown, but then smiles, brightly - a look that could give Courfeyrac’s and Jehan’s all encompassing grins a run for their money. As always, like with the rest of the years, it’s a look of understanding.  
  
Thankfully, the group leader has no problem with Eponine sitting in on the session, and handing out lumps of clay around the group she gets an equal amount as everyone else.  
  
Peering down at the lump, Grantaire makes a face, causing Eponine to laugh at him, prod him sharply in the side. “What?” She asks, as Grantaire rolls up his sleeves, still eyeing the material with disdain.  
  
“I,” He tells her, pointing a finger in her direction. “Was shit at clay work. Genuinely appalling.”  
  
She grins at him, pulling her legs up beneath her and sitting cross legged. “Is this going to be fun?” Eponine asks, making him glare at her. “This is going to be fun,” She corrects herself, cracking her knuckles and grabbing her slab of clay to throw it down on the table.  
  
“I hate you,” Grantaire admonishes, simply, doing the same and then digging his fingers spitefully into the grey block.  
  
“You said that already,” She hums at him, coyly, taring off a chunk and rolling it into the ball. “Your comebacks have become seriously appalling since you lost the function of your legs.”  
  
Now making a face at her instead of the clay, Grantaire says, “I loathe you with the passion of one hundred million burning suns and the vehemence of a billion Enjolrases.”  
  
That has her laughing, giggling, muffling the noise on the back of her hand. “Better. Much better.”  
  
-  
  
Of all the horrible things Grantaire can ever imagine in the world, he personally can’t conjure up anything much worse than rolling into Marianne’s living room and seeing Enjolras and his mother sat side by side, eyes pouring over an album of pictures which - of course - are filled with Grantaire’s childhood.  
  
Staring at them, he feels like a nightmare has literally sprung to life before his eyes. That, in a second, his year eight math teacher who scared the living crap out of him will spring from the next room to tell him he’s missed his final maths exam and needs to take it now, or a Landrover will come crashing through the patio doors.  
  
Perhaps that would be better. At least that would mean he would have a chance to wake up. Out of the nightmare, he’s merely stuck, watching the scene unfold and hearing his mother’s smile in her tone more than seeing it when she says, “He was such a good dancer. He loved it so much.” Leaving Grantaire genuinely fighting back the urge to throw up all over the carpet.  
  
He holds the urge back, however, and blanches, violently, fingernails ripping into the palms of his hands, “What are you doing here?”  
  
“Grantaire,” His mother scolds him, sharply, for his tone, something which he presently ignores because Marianne is a whole other variable Grantaire can’t cope with in this situation. Instead he keeps his eyes locked on Enjolras, hoping to cling to his disdain, who looks up at him all wrong. Rather than the hate, the loathing, Enjolras eyes are clear, steady, guilty even. It takes a while to remember that was what Grantaire had wanted, and he berates himself for not being more careful with what you wish for. He /wants/ Enjolras enraged and broken and guilty, not his eyes soft around the edges, hands twitching with nerves, suddenly looking like he /understands/.  
  
“It’s okay,” Enjolras says, breaking away from Grantaire’s stare to give his mother a reassuring smile, as Grantaire silently struggles against his frantic heart. “Could you give us a minute to talk?”  
  
Grantaire doesn’t know what’s worse - his mother and Enjolras together, or being alone with one of them. As his mother gets up and leaves the room, in this sense, it just feels like another betrayal.  
  
“What are you doing here?” Grantaire repeats, lacking a better option. Enjolras just looks back over to him, slowly, then sighs, running a hand across his face.  
  
“I’m here to apologise,” He explains, holding his palms out toward Grantaire then sitting back somewhat, crossing his arms over his chest. “I might have been… brash. Up until coming to the ABC I wasn’t very close to anyone-“  
  
Grantaire laughs, breathlessly, wondering how the fuck this could be happening to him. “Well that soon changed, didn’t it,” He mutters, bitterly, making Enjolras sit forward again.  
  
“It did,” Enjolras clarifies, leaning his elbows on his knees, folding his hands together. “I became protective of something I never really had before. You threatened that.”  
  
“I-?” Grantaire interrupts, gesturing toward himself. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”  
  
“I’m not. It’s why I lashed out. I thought you were in love with Jehan, and I thought your conduct toward your mother was unforgivable-“  
  
Grantaire chokes, literally chokes on the air he’s breathing and suddenly, acutely, feels like the effects of gravity have been ripped from him, and the world is spinning at hundreds of miles an hour around him. “You don’t know a thing about me,” He snarls, breath hitching, getting quicker. “You don’t know a fucking thing.”  
  
In answer, all Enjolras says, very quietly, is, “Combeferre explained a lot.”  
  
Grantaire stares at him.  
  
“Combeferre?” He repeats, betrayal crashing over him again, slipping, slipping. “You went to Combeferre?”  
  
“ _No_ ,” Enjolras objects, getting up from his seat and stepping toward him. “Combeferre came to me because he saw how unacceptable my behaviour was, has been.”  
  
“Get the fuck out,” Grantaire tells him, even as his breath begins to shudder, the panic coiling, taking over. “Now.”  
  
“Grantaire,” Enjolras says, stepping closer still, and it’s too late for Grantaire to hold it in. He chokes on another breath and then they’re being ripped out of him in sporadic, broken intervals, heart a hammer pulsing through his blood stream, angry tears screwed up in his eyes, squeezed shut.  
  
“Out,” He repeats, opening his eyes long enough to see Enjolras a few steps away, looking torn. Slamming his fist into the arm chair, this time the word isn’t voiced, but shouted, “ _Get out_.” Repeated, over and over, desperately, until Enjolras takes two unsteady steps back and leaves.  
  
His mother finds him like that, sat in the centre of the room, hands pressed to his face and panting into the skin of his wrists. She tries talking to him, but he just screams at her until she follows Enjolras’ lead.  
  
-  
  
At around 1am the current bottle of something he’s holding is plucked very carefully from his fingers and placed on the coffee table beside the couch. With a sigh, the figure sits down next to Grantaire, the dim light of the lamp reflecting off of his glasses through the dark.  
  
“How could you?” Grantaire asks, drunken and childlike while Combeferre tries to offer him a glass of water, which he merely pushes away, petulant.  
  
Gently, Combeferre places the water beside the bottle and then tries to look Grantaire very seriously in the eye. Grantaire thrashes away from it, eyeing the floor instead, head turned adamantly away.  
  
Sighing again, Combeferre says, “Would you rather he hated you?”  
  
“Yes,” Grantaire slurs, because that’s all he’s ever wanted. For Enjolras to hate himself, and for everyone else to hate Enjolras in turn. But life has a tendency to crush Grantaire’s dreams and scatter them into the wind so they can blow back, hit him in the face and get grit in his eyes.  
  
“You don’t deserve to be treated that way,” Combeferre explains, placing a hand on Grantaire’s arm which he thinks, sluggishly, he should shake off. He doesn’t. Instead he smiles, not bitter or regretful, but open, honest.  
  
“I do,” Grantaire tells him, around the smile, now leaning into Combeferre’s side. “I’m nothing.”  
  
Tenderly, Combeferre wraps an arm around Grantaire’s middle and Grantaire presses into the touch, hiding his face in Combeferre’s chest. “I wish you didn’t believe that,” Combeferre informs him, stroking Grantaire’s hair briefly and then resting the same hand back on Grantaire’s arm. Grantaire just closes his eyes, worn tired by crying, bones heavy with the drinking, and let’s Combeferre take his weight.  
  
-  
  
When Grantaire wakes up, not only is he in his own bed, but Grantaire is something like sixty-five percent sure that Combeferre is making breakfast. Something which he confirms half an hour later, rolling into the kitchen with a pounding hangover, a hand cradled against his forehead, while Combeferre pours himself a cup of coffee at the kitchen counter.  
  
He doesn’t mean to glower, because this is /Combeferre/, but Grantaire has all these sorts of walls and pressure points that tend not to exclude or discriminate against long term friends or people who visited his hospital ward almost daily after his casual and life destroying accident. By now, it’s instinctive.  
  
Which is why he practically growls, “I don’t need to be babysat.” as he wheels himself past the door frame and over the threshold.  
  
Combeferre looks up from the mug and offers him a smile, reaching up into the cabinet to make one mug two. “I know,” He says, placidly. “I’m not.”  
  
By now, Grantaire knows how these conversations go.  
  
Grantaire would ask, “Why are you here?” and Combeferre would say something along the lines of, “To stop you choking on your own vomit.” or something medically logical and rational that Grantaire hadn’t spared a thought to when he was cracking open the fourth bottle the night before.  
  
An entirely valid answer, of course, it’s fucking Combeferre, but it wouldn’t matter to Grantaire, and he would tell him, “Sounds like babysitting,” anyway.  
  
“You would say that,” Combeferre would smile, put bread in the toaster. “Some might say it was being a good friend.”  
  
“You would say that,” Grantaire would tease, a little fond, and a little angry, and a little forced, then Combeferre would look at him, measured, and meaningful, and only a little sad, and head for the refrigerator.  
  
Grantaire knows how it would go, so he doesn’t say anything at all, just eyes Combeferre and accepts the steaming mug of coffee when it’s handed to him.  
  
Combeferre might look beautiful in the sunlight streaming through the large kitchen windows, slanting off the bright metallic surfaces, the squeaky clean tiles, but looking at anything bright only feels like someone has taken a crowbar to his temple - and Grantaire is the type of person who /knows/ what that feels like - so if Combeferre is anything other than Combeferre, he doesn’t see it.  
  
There was a point where Grantaire had seen something, back when he had just joined the company, but who wouldn’t? Grantaire was stepping into his first real commitment as a dancer, young, arrogant and in awe (Grantaire had never been fucking naive, that was something) while Combeferre was brilliant, and fierce, and steady. Grantaire had always been a tumult in need of steady, so the attraction was reflex, knee-jerking. Stupid. A bad concoction of hero worship and the need for a male role model. The attraction, whatever it was, romantic, or platonic, or something else entirely probably ending in -ic was steadied to friendship after little more than a few weeks.  
  
For one main reason, in fact - that being that Combeferre could see Grantaire, could measure him, like the span of a thumb, but never in a manner that was patronising, just… fucking infuriating. It had started on the dance floor, correcting Grantaire’s steps or realigning his interpretation with words, then touches, then with a stubborn gaze across the hardwood floor, arms crossed over his chest. After becoming friends, Combeferre could gauge Grantaire’s mood, cajole it out of him with words, then touches, then with a stubborn gaze across a table at the Musain.  Where Jehan was empathy, and Eponine blunt truths, Combeferre was insight.  
  
Combeferre puts bread in the toaster, and Grantaire sips at his coffee, and Grantaire decides somewhere in between all this to break the silence.  
  
“Who called you?” He prompts quietly, before taking another sip.  
  
“Enjolras,” Combeferre informs him, plucking eggs from the fridge. “Then your mother, then Eponine.”  
  
Grantaire winces and moves himself to the kitchen table, hanging his head and pushing his fingers tentatively against his temple.  
  
-  
  
Yet, instead of finding his ex-cast mates in their usual rehearsal studios he finds Enjolras, alone.  
  
Surprisingly, it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to, although that’s probably just a still lingering effect of Eponine’s speech to Grantaire, numbing. Somewhere in his head he knows the anger will set back in eventually, the cruel, jealous loathing. Looking at Enjolras all Grantaire feels is a slow itch of anger buried beneath his skin, a breath of anxiety. It’s not enough to leave him crying, but it’s sobering, and Grantaire is never fucking sober anymore.  
  
The ballet is called “REVOLUTION” and details the rise and fall of a band of revolutionaries, while juxtaposing their story against the three styles of ballet. Their story begins in the classical movement, in which they rise, then moves to the neoclassical, in which they fight, and ends in contemporary, the point at which they meet their deaths. Although based around the group as a whole the focus sways back and forth to the revolutionaries leader, blazon in red with passion and resolve, who brings the revolutionaries together and dies alone, the last.  
  
Grantaire watches Enjolras as he performs the final scene, the point at which he would be spinning through his comrades only to watch them fall, one after another. The moves purposely and wildly tumble away from ballet and into a more eclectic, wild combination of dance as the leader trips through the massacre, helpless and responsible. Yet, it’s so… Enjolras. Every mark is perfect. Every move is completed as elegantly as the next — but it feels wrong. So wrong it makes Grantaire want to scratch at that itch beneath his skin, makes his skin feel tight against his bones, and makes him desperately want to jump up from his seat and /move/.  
  
Instead, he announces, very simply, “No.”  
  
Enjolras startles, enough that he barely manages to stop himself from tripping over, and when he regains his footing he’s glaring, wholeheartedly, in Grantaire’s direction. Then, not stopping to catch his breath, Enjolras stalks away to turn off the music system, as Grantaire watches him, eyes narrowed.  
  
“It’s wrong,” Grantaire states, more of a mental note than an insult, although Enjolras takes it as one anyway.  
  
“That was-“ Enjolras begins, defensive, with his arms crossed over his chest.  
  
“ _Wrong_ ,” Grantaire repeats, and shoves his hands into his hair, dashing his fingers through it as he tries to work out _how_. Enjolras is clean cut, and although he hates to admit it, a brilliant dancer but it’s too…  
  
“Too perfect,” He murmurs, and Grantaire must look fucking insane to Enjolras because he doesn’t look so much as angry anymore as taken aback, slightly perplexed, even.  
  
“Grantaire, I know you don’t particularly like me, but-“  
  
“You’re a fucking robot,” Grantaire finally works out, wheeling toward him and waving a hand down his body. Purposely, he ignores Enjolras’ words, knowing too well it would only end in more arguments Grantaire is sick of. He came looking for his friends, not a fight. “It’s all there, yes, you have the steps and it all looks right, but I don’t feel it.”  
  
Enjolras stares at him, and there’s a fury there Grantaire suddenly gets the urge to sink his teeth into, wants to rip out of his skin. Grantaire physically shakes the thought out of his head, and wheels around him at a carefully calculated distance.  
  
“I think that may just be your prejudice speaking,” Enjolras hypothesises, voice clipped, making Grantaire laugh. He turns back around, bridging the space, and shoves Enjolras, pleased when he stumbles.  
  
“For fuck sake, will you just fucking listen to me for a second? You have to be emotional here. Your friends are dead or dying, the ones you brought into this. Your cause is lost, your dream is fucking dead, and you are breaking down and down until that last moment of acceptance, the inevitable fate that you will die just like the rest of them, but you’re okay with that,” Grantaire aches out in one breath, all the while Enjolras looks at him with an expression Grantaire can’t even fucking fathom.  
  
Exasperated, Grantaire chucks his hands up in the air and moves over to the sound system to restart the track. When he does Enjolras is still staring at him, long enough to miss his cue, but then he blinks and snaps back into the  dance.  
  
Watching him on the floor, repeating all his same mistakes, Grantaire wants to _scream_.  
  
Instead, he shouts at him, “Your friends are dying, Enjolras.”  
  
Enjolras drops low for a second then rises again, still too mechanically, still not right. Grantaire grates his fingers against the armrests of his chair, and continues, “They’re dying and it’s all your fucking fault.”  
  
“They put everything on the line for you and you led them here,” Grantaire bites out, and Enjolras manages to glare at him for a moment in a turn. “You did this, _you_ killed them.”  
  
“They are dying for you and you can’t stop it, it’s your fault,” Grantaire tells him, voice now shouting over the music, echoing off the walls. “Are you fucking hearing me, Tin Man? It’s your fault, and they are dying and you don’t have any power in this situation, you fucking _asshit_ , Enjolras-“  
  
And, just like that, Enjolras snaps. His movements crack into something wild and broken, something primal and ethereal, and heartwreckingly magnificent. It feels like slow motion, like the breath after a first kiss, the break of rain in sifting heat, perfection encapsulated.  
  
He reaches for where Courfeyrac would hit the ground, eyes blown mad like a rabid dog glassed behind a cage, seeing, and hearing, and not being able to touch a thing, not being able to catch one of them in time. Like Enjolras, he hits each mark, again and again, but his whole body,  his whole soul visibly moves with it, ferocity, and anger, and guilt, and Grantaire forgets what it’s like to breathe. Grantaire wants to kiss him and to dance with him and feel that beneath his hands. He imagines it wouldn’t be like fire at all but like ice, breath taking, and possessive, and still managing to leave burns.  
  
Yet Grantaire can’t, and the picture in front of him sours in his bitterness as he remembers he’s nothing more than a cripple. More so, as he remembers who Enjolras is, and what Grantaire is in turn. Enjolras, a true prodigy, much more talented than Grantaire ever was. Grantaire, legless. Grantaire, despicable.  
  
In front of him, Enjolras winds down, slowly, and comes to a stop, on the mark, then falls back with the final gun shot, frozen in time.  
  
From the doorway Combeferre starts clapping, with an awed filled expression Grantaire was sure he was mirroring until a moment ago. “Now you just have to reenact that on the night and we’ll be in for a winner,” He says, with a crooked grin.  
  
As Grantaire leaves Combeferre slaps him on the shoulder, looking fond and making Grantaire wonder how much he saw of that whole damn exchange. As Grantaire leaves Enjolras’ eyes follow him, scolding down his shoulder blades. **  
  
**

* * *

 

 **name:** untitled  
 **pairing:** enjolras x grantaire  
 **summary:** angsty band au  
 **warnings:** alcoholism, depression, suicide  
  
Enjolras only smiles after a show, and then it’s manic, like a kid starved of affections at Christmas, who will only later realise the presents are full of disappointments and the festive cheer won’t stop your parents from arguing - both fated to relapse back into mediocrity after the facade falls.  
  
Enjolras greets Grantaire like that after a night at London’s Electric Ballroom, shaking in his sweat drenched clothes and pushing the hair from his face.  
  
He grabs Grantaire’s hand over the merch booth, grips it too tight in his fingers, and beams at him with his perfect dentistry, offhandedly oblivious to the fangirls in a way he never is when the adrenaline ends. Then, Enjolras keeps his sleeves carefully rolled past his wrists, and his smiles suffocated in the grim press of his mouth. Away from the dark and the after-show buzz Enjolras berates Grantaire for entering a room, and appears, snarling “I don’t know why you’re here,” like a beaten, mistreated dog, and refuses to touch him even when the situation demands it, even though he slaps Combeferre on the elbow in practice, and let’s Courfeyrac tackle him to the ground, and bumps sides with Jehan over notebooks of messy lyrics.  
  
“That was fucking amazing,” Enjolras presses into his ear, leant haphazardly over the table with his shaking fingers slip sliding over Grantaire’s own, needy and lustful. Grantaire just smiles at him, and fights down the urge to say something fucking stupid like, you were amazing, into his mouth, or the hollow of his throat, or the skin of his wrist.  
  
Enjolras told him he loved him once, like this. They were in Paris, where the cobbled streets were slick with summer rain and everything was humid and smelt like thunder. Enjolras had appeared, out of breath from running, and plastered himself into the dark, damp alcove Grantaire had secluded himself in to escape the rain and catch up on his nicotine addiction.  
  
He’d kissed him then, a messy alleyway murder, before the cigarette was barely out of his mouth.  
  
He’d pressed up against him with too much violence, and passion, and grappling. Enjolras was desperate hands that continually sparked from one place to another - from his waist, to his hair, to his neck, to his chest, to his heart, buried under his shirt, at his back, making Grantaire arch, and whimper and bend beneath him. His hands moved as though, if they stopped, the whole world would start crashing, and Grantaire just let it happen.  
  
Enjolras was humming, crackling with energy beneath his hands, like a fly catcher, and Grantaire was the insect, burning himself up as he ached up against Enjolras’ body, and hauled him closer by his hipbones, and gasped, pins and needles, into his mouth.  Grantaire knew it was all a lie, a fucked up coping mechanism Enjolras had dreamt up, but he was selfish and in love, and in the night Enjolras kissed him like he wanted him. Sometimes he even looked at him with warm, soft eyes like Grantaire was all he could see and all he would ever want to see.  
  
Enjolras had told him he had loved him then, gasped into his mouth as Grantaire pressed his palm against his trouser front, and Enjolras might have well as ripped Grantaire’s heart from his chest, Davy Jones style, because he was enslaved, forever, just by some vocal cords, and a tongue, and a mouth. Enjolras owned him and Enjolras knew it. Grantaire had hated Paris ever since.  
  
Grantaire drops Enjolras’ hand before Enjolras’ begins calculating details like when he’ll kiss him, to sell a shirt to a girl with a pretty smile, who makes a piss poor attempt of flirting with him.  
  
-  
  
Combeferre was the one who found Enjolras, covered in blood in the tour bus toilet on their last tour. Thankfully, Grantaire hadn’t been there, but drunk and stupefied somewhere in a Manchester nightclub while a boy with pretty Enjolras eyes flirted with him, and offered to pay for his next drink.  
  
He’d tried to kill himself, second attempt, third if you counted the time sixteen year old Enjolras jumped from the roof of his parents house, wild on alcohol (as Grantaire had been told by one of Enjolras’ old school “friends” who they’d met passing through Enjolras’ home city. Enjolras had been unbearable for the duration of their stay, and didn’t look anyone in the eye, and fucked Grantaire in some public toilets that reeked of piss, his mouth at his throat, hissing equal amounts of hate and apologies into his skin).  
  
After giving a back alley blow job to Enjolras eyes (ever the submissive for him, even his ghosts) Grantaire had stumbled back to the buses to find blood stains, and tears, and Combeferre’s grim, grim face staring blankly at Courfeyrac’s as he undid Combeferre’s bloodstained shirt with trembling fingers, and Feuilly talking urgently on the phone about cancelling the tour, and Jehan touching Grantaire’s shoulder while Grantaire had span, madly, on the spot.  
  
“Enjolras?” He’d asked, seeing Combeferre, seeing Courfeyrac, seeing Fueilly, seeing Jehan, seeing Bousset, seeing Joly, seeing Bahorel. “Enjolras?” Grantaire had repeated, more wildly, not seeing Enjolras, not seeing Enjolras, not seeing Enjolras, not seeing Enjolras, not seeing Enjolras, as Jehan tried to grab for him, to centre him as he stumbled, drunk and desperate.  
  
“He’s in the hospital,” Jehan had told him, and Grantaire had only be able to think _no_. “He tried to kill himself.”  
  
When they visited Enjolras in the hospital a few days later he was very calmly sat up in bed, despondently filling out a Sudoku. Grantaire had grabbed his hands and Enjolras had looked at him very sharply until he’d unclaimed them.  
  
“Why?” Grantaire had asked, more of a plea.  
  
All Enjolras had said was, “Well, it wasn’t like there was anywhere I could hang myself” and Grantaire had punched him very hard in the jaw.

 

* * *

 

 

 **name:** the kind of shivering wreck that i adore  
 **pairing:** grantaire x combeferre (also some combeferre x enjolras  & jehan x courfeyrac in there too)  
 **summary:** accident  & emergency au  
 **warnings:** alcoholism, mentions of death

It’s hammering with rain outside, the sort of rain that can get you drenched in thirty-seconds flat (if you’re even that lucky), rain which can only foreshadow a dreadful summer storm. It slams into the dreary windows of the hospital room Combeferre’s currently stationed in, and if Combeferre silently barters with the heavens to stop the rain by the time his shift is over, no one will know about his slip of astute logic (because human will never has, or likely will, effect the governing laws of nature - in this case water vapour, precipitation, gravity).  
  
He has forty-five minutes left of his shift (which he wouldn’t have remembered if Courfeyrac hadn’t texted him with some blurred picture of a nightclub and the caption, ‘Guess who’s getting laid tonight!!!!!’ twenty minutes ago, because time really does fly when you’re dealing with the injured stupidity of the general public) but the accident and emergency waiting room is packed, so that’s become an unhelpful estimate at best. Combeferre also has a migraine pounding behind his eyes, and a dishevelled looking twenty-something year old rubbing the back of his head and swaying in the middle of the room.  
  
“How did this even happen?” Combeferre asks as the other creates a steady puddle of not only water, but blood and body glitter all over the bog standard practically washable linoleum flooring.  
  
There’s purple and blue glitter scattered over his collarbones, beginning to run haphazardly down his chest in rivulets of water, and Combeferre certainly doesn’t follow that line with his eyes because in his career there are certain routine _talks_ about sexual harassment that he’s heard enough of.  
  
At least, it seems, the jeans stayed on where his shirt didn’t, although Combeferre can see the top button’s undone, smudges of green glitter on his hips and attached to the denim plastered to his thighs, so obviously someone hadn’t wanted it that way.  
  
Grantaire (if his paperwork is actually _right_ for once) takes a moment, blinking up at the bright overhead light, before he valiantly tries to look Combeferre in the eye.  
  
“The My Little Pony tattoos?” He finally answers, slurring, bracketing one of the same semi-permenant tattoos with his fingers and then grinning at it.  
  
“No,” Combeferre sighs, exasperated, because it’s been a long night and though all their friends seem to believe Combeferre doesn’t get riled at things, there’s really only so much his patience can take, catching Grantaire by the elbow and pointing, very directly, to his back. “How did you get impaled with a knife?”  
  
Four coffees, one hurried bagel, and two hours later Combeferre collapses into his car and flexes his hands on the wheel, groggily trying to decide whether or not to risk the twenty minute drive to his home because Combeferre’s _seen_ the side effects of driving tired first hand, with blood up to his wrists.  
  
He decides to take the 3am walk home instead.  
  
It’s only when he drags himself back out of the car, the door slam echoing through the desolately empty car park, that he realises the rain’s stopped.  
  
-  
  
“A &E is turning you cynical,” Enjolras observes, voice laced with fondness, as Combeferre gratefully swallows down the coffee Enjolras had offered to him when he’d wandered, muzzy and sleep deprived, into the kitchen. It’s exactly how Combeferre likes it, black, no sugar, and not the shitty filtered stuff they get in the hospital staff room.  
  
“It’s making me tired,” Combeferre corrects him, warmly, rubbing an eye and tugging the newspaper from beneath Enjolras’ fingers where it had been left, abandoned, discarded once Enjolras had made it to the sport pages. “Which makes me irritable.”  
  
Enjolras laughs, and it’s such a pretty sound Combeferre can understand why people fall in love with him. Why, hoards of males and females alike, would follow Enjolras to the ends of the Earth if they had the chance, but settle for trying to cause a political and social revolution instead.  
  
“I still can’t believe anything would test your patience,” Enjolras comments, the hint of a smirk.  
  
Combeferre looks up from the newspaper to quirk him a smile, deadpanning, “Try a girl with a broken toe bringing her entire immediate family to the hospital with her.”  
  
“I’m sure you dealt with it amicably and professionally,” Enjolras says, offhanded and a little cold, and if Combeferre hadn’t known him for so long he might have missed the drop of sarcasm there, the suppress of a smile.  
  
“I did,” Combeferre replies, turning a page. “In a most unusual turn of events she didn’t die from a fractured hallux.”  
  
He doesn’t notice Enjolras get up from his chair, absently engrossed in reading an article on page eight, so he startles at the feeling of fingers on his jaw line, soft and careful. Combeferre turns into the kiss as much as he’s led there, to the familiar chaste press of lips against his own. Enjolras curls the fingers of his spare hand into Combeferre’s hair, and thumbs at the line of his jaw with the other then steps back, picking up his coffee (weak, multiple sugars) and leans on the kitchen counter.  
  
“Tell me what you think about the article on page 12,” Enjolras nods, and Combeferre smiles, downing the last of his coffee, and settling in for a debate.  
  
-  
  
“I got laaaaaid,” Courfeyrac announces to the Musain, a pub that had become a general meeting place for their friends, being in near vicinity of all their jobs, with a broad sweep of his arm. Absently, Feuilly looks up from his phone.  
  
“I know.”  
  
“Yeah, me too,” Says Bossuet, and beside him, tucked under his arm Joly affirms the same, with a hum.  
  
When Courfeyrac looks toward Combeferre expectantly he just nods, feeling vaguely amused at Courfeyrac’s downturned expression, the pout beginning to form.  
  
“How?” He asks quietly, almost sounding timid if this _weren’t_ Courfeyrac, who’s about as dramatic and insufferable as Combeferre’s youngest cousins at their best of times.  
  
“I’m pretty sure you sent it to all your contacts,” Joly supplies, eyebrow raised and beginning to grin.  
  
“Yeah, Musichetta sent me a text asking about it,” Bossuet adds, digging out his phone in confirmation and accidentally jostling his elbow into Joly’s chest in the process (he apologises, quickly, flushing, and Joly kisses him on the nose for it, and Combeferre suddenly feels a beat of nostalgia crash heavy against his ribcage). “She asks if he or she or the person of non-specified gender was cute.”  
  
At that, Courfeyrac sighs, and falls down into a chair, swinging his legs up into Feuilly’s lap, who doesn’t even blink at the intrusion. “He was beautiful, and we fucked like gods, and he recited Sylvia Plath poems to me before we slept.”  
  
Combeferre openly frowns at Courfeyrac across the table, “That sounds vaguely worrying.”  
  
Courfeyrac makes a face at him, and tries to shove his feet in Feuilly’s face, which earns him a sharp punch in the stomach and Combeferre’s feet planted firmly back on the floor.  
  
“You have no romanticism, ‘Ferre,” Courfeyrac sighs, frustrated, stopping rubbing his stomach to jab a finger in his direction (although Enjolras would disagree, arguing there’s a certain romanticism in wanting peace rather than justice - an old, tired debate). “One day some beautiful boy or girl… or persons of a non-specified gender will sweep you off your feet, and fuck you like a god, and recite Sylvia Plath into the crook of your neck, with their beautiful breath ghosting over your skin and you’ll have goosebumps and you’ll totally fucking understand what I’m saying right now.”  
  
“That’s very specific,” Is all Combeferre says in reply, drily, and Courfeyrac actually makes the effort to untie his shoe to throw it at him.  
  
-  
  
“At least you kept your shirt on this time,” Combeferre smiles blithely at Grantaire, who, just looking at the large gash across his head, most definitely has a concussion. From the smell of his breath, Combeferre also deduces that the man is also shit faced - again. He isn’t judging, but it does install him with the odd sense of de ja vu.  
  
“Yeah,” Grantaire grins, automatically, fingers curled tightly around the edge of the bed while staring at some undefined point on the wall. Abruptly, he blinks, and turns his head to look at Combeferre with no recognition whatsoever. “Wait, what?” He revises. “I don’t know you.”  
  
“I treated you last week,” Combeferre explains, stepping over toward him and gently tilting up his chin with his fingers, eyeing the cut. When Combeferre glances down at Grantaire’s expression it’s still a beautifully drunk blank canvas, and Combeferre can’t help but look incredulous. “You had a knife in your back?”  
  
“Oooh,” Grantaire says, finally with some sort of recognition, and flashes his teeth at Combeferre’s bemused expression, the stink of alcohol all over him. “I forgot about that.”  
  
Combeferre resists the urge to say, _you might be the strangest person I’ve ever met_ , but just picks up a torch instead, tapping Grantaire’s chin again. “Look straight at me,” He orders, and Grantaire does try, he gives him that.  
  
Combeferre moves the light from the left eye to the right when Grantaire startles him by commenting, “You have very nice eyes.” It’s more of a slur, barely comprehensible, but it still jolts a very loud, very hard beat of his heart (which is wrong for so many reasons, mostly because it’s a medically inaccurate, overused and cliched statement, and not rational _at all_. Although at least it’s a lot better than describing the moment as ‘heart stopping’, firstly because it’s not, and secondly, because if your heart is stopping in anyway shape or form you have obviously and definitely have something severely medically wrong with you.). “Dr…?”  
  
“Combeferre,” He answers instinctively and then curses himself, because Grantaire suddenly looks like he’s just laid his hands on the Holy Grail and Combeferre has a certain level of carefully structured professionalism to maintain.  
  
“Nice to meet you, Dr Combeferre.”  
  
One look at Grantaire's face has him wondering what exactly he's got himself into.  
  
-  
  
The staff room coffee is still terrible, but at least Combeferre has a place to sit down  after being on his feet for hours, though Combeferre knows it won’t be for long. Grantaire left without a fuss and, luckily for him, without stitches, but Combeferre gets the feeling he hasn’t seen the last of him yet, even if that premonition does sound like something out of a very bad action movie.  
  
He is very sure that this isn’t a good thing, either, in anyway shape or form.  
  
Joly is beautiful and grinning when he sits down beside him, and Combeferre quickly and carefully retracts that first adjective because they haven’t been dating for months now. He could blame old habits for it, but it seems like a cop out. A more concrete blame could be placed on the cold bed he goes to sleep in at night, but it tastes like a lie, because the smell of Enjolras’ aftershave is all over the sheets.  
  
It’s not like Combeferre is bitter, because he can honestly say he isn’t. Sometimes things happen, and those things include falling head over heels in love with another man who just happens to fall into A &E one day while in a committed relationship. Combeferre certainly can’t blame Joly or Bossuet for any of it. Yet, one day, Joly had commented that Combeferre tends to love too deep and too much all at once, so Combeferre just blames the stray thought on the tangled, nostalgic roots of his previous relationship, dug too deep to be touched by a shovel, or by weed killer.  
  
Combeferre is happy for them, and it isn’t a statement to keep a deep, dark indignation at bay, but the truth. Because you can be happy for someone, and still miss them, as Combeferre has found out first hand.  
  
When Combeferre looks back at Joly he’s no longer beautiful and no longer grinning. Instead, he’s speaking. “You’re overworking yourself… Again.”  
  
Combeferre tiredly raises his cup in response, but he’s smiling. “Welcome to the NHS.”  
  
Joly laughs, and the worry’s gone, knocking his mug against Combeferre’s in a toast. “Bless be to her Majesty.”  
  
-  
  
The Sylvia Plath reading one-night stand of Courfeyrac turns out to be a young university student called Jean Prouvaire, better known as Jehan. When Combeferre first meets him he’s wearing a pink-pastel shirt with the words “BLOW ME” on it, in block caps, a heavy leather jacket, skinny jeans which redefine the word _tight_ with ripped open knees, and knuckle dusters.  
  
-  
  
“Do you know what’s really weird about medical role-play porn?” Grantaire says from his seat on top of the examination counter, carefully cradling his bleeding arm as Combeferre checks the extent of the damage.  
  
With a frown, Combeferre glances up at Grantaire’s face, narrowing him with a look. “No,” He replies, drily.  
  
“Well, the doctor will just be doing his thing, y’know, and then all of a sudden he’ll just start jerking the guy off or have his mouth around his dick,” Grantaire informs him, in his usual stupefied slur, which Combeferre realises, with some shock, he can decipher every word of.  
  
A few weeks ago it had sounded as if Grantaire was speaking another language when he talked, but now Combeferre only has to give the words half of his attention to process them. Distantly, he thinks he should probably find this worrying, instead he only accepts that life is full of surprises.  
  
“Like, what the fuck? At least ask the guy for fucks sake. Maybe he doesn’t want to have his cock sucked by some ruggedly handsome doctor guy, y’know? Like that shit could get you all sorts of fired and sued, at least have the common sense to ask if they want to have illicit sex with you bent over a desk in latex gloves.”  
  
“Wait,” Combeferre stops him, drifting away to prepare what he’ll need for a new round of stitches but holding his gaze from the other side of the room. “Is this a proposition?”  
  
Grantaire grins at him, and if it’s meant to be innocent it down right fails because it looks _flithy_ , and Combeferre doesn’t think about what that does to his heart rate at all. “I don’t know,” Grantaire hums, swinging his legs back and forth in front of him. “Do you want it to be?”  
  
“I _want_ you to stop getting into Fight Club style back alley bar fights and making A &E your second home,” Combeferre drawls, trying to sound sarcastic but ending up with a tone that comes out on the fond side of exasperated. Even Grantaire looks a little taken a back by it, but then Combeferre sometimes wonders if he has anyone to care for him at all. After all, there has to be a reason why Grantaire lets his body be used as a punching bag every night, or falls into the emergency room stinking of alcohol and brandishing smiles to every night nurse who knows him by name. Yet, Combeferre being Combeferre he can’t force himself to ask.  
  
-  
  
Combeferre hasn’t seen Grantaire in two weeks, which shouldn’t be worrying, because it obviously means Grantaire isn’t out injuring himself, but somehow it _is_. Now, as two weeks starts to head toward the three week mark, Combeferre can’t help but imagine Grantaire dead in a ditch somewhere. A thought which he doesn’t quite know how to deal with, so, instead, Combeferre just reminds himself that he’s rational individual, neither a pessimist or an optimist, and there must be some reasonable explanation for why Grantaire isn’t grinning at him over blood stains in the early hours of the morning.  
  
“Have you suddenly realised you’re in love with Enjolras?” Courfeyrac asks, bluntly, one day in Feuilly’s kitchen. In the living room, Bossuet, Joly, Marius and Feuilly are watching Life of Pi, so that only leaves Jehan, Cosette and _Enjolras himself_ to turn and stare at him.  
  
Combeferre almost chokes on his lemonade. “/What?/“  
  
“I thought we were going for a more _subtle_ approach,” Cosette chides Courfeyrac, soft and fond, peeling a slice of leftover pizza off the plate and taking a miniature bite out of it. Beside her, Enjolras is watching Combeferre with a concerned but levelled stare, not showing a hint of surprise at Courfeyrac’s sudden interrogation.  
  
“You’ve been acting weird,” Courfeyrac explains, waving a hand at him. “Not like Marius-weird when something’s wrong, but just…”  
  
“Off,” Enjolras finishes, quietly, and Enjolras looks _guilty_ for some reason, and Combeferre is wondering, distantly, when his life got quite this strange.  
  
“I haven’t suddenly realised I’m in love with you,” Combeferre reassures Enjolras, firmly, who is still frowning, but at least the sense of guiltiness seems to clear. He even offers Combeferre a slight smile at the words.  
  
“Hey, that’s great,” Says Courfeyrac grinning, clapping his hands together. “Now Enjolras won’t have a heart-attack and we can save ourselves the emotional trauma of that fiasco.”  
  
Cosette thumps him, hard in the chest, and shoots Courfeyrac a glare. “Tact, Courfeyrac,” Cosette reminds him, sharply. “Learn what it means.”  
  
Courfeyrac drags in a breath, going to say something in return, but Enjolras interrupts him, very seriously and very quietly in a way that leaves no room for negotiation. “Would you mind giving us a minute?”  
  
His gaze hasn’t moved from Combeferre’s, and it doesn’t even when the others file out, Jehan and Cosette both pausing to touch Combeferre tenderly on the arm before they leave.  
  
Combeferre rubs a hand across his forehead, feeling as guilty as Enjolras had looked because Enjolras and Combeferre have always shared everything.  
  
They share an house, and books (and Combeferre scolds Enjolras for writing over _everything_ \- scattered notes in the margins and at least three different types of pen underlining, and circling, and leaving scathing remarks on the bottom of pages, which Combeferre will deny smiling at because he _hates people writing in books_. Except sometimes Combeferre will write a little comment back, in pencil, because he’s not a heathen, and Enjolras will look smug when he’s on some whimsical re-read but won’t comment on it, only if he has a point to argue.), and a bookshelf, and a DVD collection. They shared cutlery, and food, and washing up duties, and a group of friends, and disappointing stories about their parents, and had kept sharing until their relationship didn’t need to be talked about, and conversations didn’t need to happen, because at this point they read each other like books (with messy inscriptions and scathing remarks in three different types of pen - and one line in pencil - on every page).  
  
So, not sharing feels like a crime, like an insult to Enjolras himself and the easy back and forth flow of their relationship. It wasn’t something Combeferre had meant to happen. Only, Grantaire had been no one, just another patient wandering through Accident and Emergency.  Except Grantaire had kept coming _back_. Yet Combeferre doesn’t know where to begin because Grantaire is still no one, and he doesn’t know how to explain feeling worried over a man he barely knows. Grantaire is just Grantaire - who appears abruptly in his life every once in a while and grins like he knows something Combeferre doesn’t.  
  
How is he meant to define that?  
  
“I’m sorry about that,” Enjolras says, steadily, moving over to him. “But Courfeyrac’s right, you have been acting strangely, and we were worried.”  
  
Combeferre sighs as Enjolras tips his head against his, resting their foreheads together, Enjolras’ hands sliding up the length of his chest. “How so?” Combeferre asks.  
  
“Nothing big, you just seem quieter, more subdued where you seemed happier,” Enjolras shrugs slightly, a hand cupping against Combeferre’s neck. “Jehan said you looked like you were pining.”  
  
Combeferre laughs, suddenly, and kisses Enjolras quickly on the mouth. “Well, I’m not. Everything’s fine.”  
  
Enjolras smile looks relieved and he steps back, nodding.  
  
-  
  
Today Grantaire is waiting for him outside the hospital, in a beanie and fingerless gloves even though it’s fucking twenty-something degrees outside, with a hopeful expression that’s trying to pass as indifferent, and Combeferre just walks by him because he _can’t_ , not today.  
  
Because Accident and Emergency isn’t all drunken injuries, and people with broken bones, and elderly ladies with dodgy hips. Sometimes people are rolled in on gurneys, covered in blood, and sometimes those people die, and sometimes those people aren’t people at all, but children who haven’t made it past their seventh birthday.  
  
Today is not a day he wants to deal with Grantaire.  
  
But a problem with Grantaire is that he’s persistent, in a way that crawls up underneath Combeferre’s skin and a way which he doesn’t feel he can cope with when Grantaire instantly pushes himself off the wall and jogs after him.  
  
“Not today,” Combeferre commands, harsh, offhanded, over his shoulder, as Grantaire jogs up parallel beside him.  
  
“Not today?” Grantaire echoes and Combeferre can hear the warm grin in his tone, the mischievous lilt, the dry tease just there, on the inflection of his question. “But the sun is shining, and the birds are singing, and-“  
  
“Please,” Combeferre interrupts, suddenly feeling much more tired than he was a moment ago. He can see his car up ahead and all he wants to do is enclose himself there and drive away from this situation, no matter how childish, or irresponsible that might seem later. Yet, Grantaire stops him, hand catching his elbow, the material of his gloves making the touch much too warm in the heat, stifling and scalding.  
  
Combeferre knows he could pull away. He knows how easy it would be to tug his arm sharply from beneath Grantaire’s hand and fish his car keys from his pocket, step inside, and drive away but, for some reason he doesn’t want to explore, he doesn’t. Instead, he stands still on the tarmac and feels Grantaire orbit around him until they meet face to face.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Grantaire asks, hands tentatively sliding down Combeferre’s shoulders and over his forearms. Like this they’re practically the same height, so Combeferre can’t shy away from Grantaire’s gaze, not at all steady but strong, intent. Grantaire’s full-focus is like a bind, suffocating almost, because Grantaire is intense and overly passionate in so many ways, and with his full attention on one object it _shows_.  
  
“Grantaire,” Combeferre says, not sure what it’s meant to mean - a warning, a plea, a rebuke, anything - everything. Combeferre’s just hurting, deep and throbbing because it’s his job to /save/ people and  he’s failed. It’s a question he can’t answer, because then it becomes all too much and much too real.  
  
Even on nights when Combeferre is muted and shaking Enjolras doesn’t ask, just kisses him breathless, or lays a hand on his shoulder, depending on what he needs. It’s a mutual agreement - don’t ask, don’t tell.  
  
Yet Grantaire, motherfucking Grantaire, stupid damned Grantaire, is persistent.  
  
“Tell me,” He murmurs, low and too close, hands wrapped loosely around Combeferre’s wrists and- Combeferre shouldn’t be letting this happen, at all. He shouldn’t be leaning into Grantaire’s touch as he curves his thumb slowly over his jawline, the cotton of his gloves catching on Combeferre’s growing stubble, so he does what he can, and steps away.  
  
Combeferre is about to say “No”, or _something_ which will keep Grantaire at arms length, when Grantaire nods behind Combeferre to his car. “Are you planning on driving home?” He asks.  
  
Combeferre doesn’t expect that, not in the slightest, and can’t help but think _what does it fucking matter?_.  
  
“Yes,” He says, exasperated, running a hand through his hair. “Yes, I am.”  
  
“Well you’re not,” Grantaire tells him, and Combeferre goes to protest when Grantaire continues, adamantly. “You’re going to tell me you feel okay going on the road shaking and obviously upset when you could cause a fucking accident yourself?”  
  
Combeferre looks at him, because _shit_ when did Grantaire, Grantaire who gets drunk every night and is plastered with scars from the side effects, become the rational one in this situation? Grantiare looks back.  
  
“I’ll just… Just let me drive you wherever you want to go.”

 

* * *

 

 

 **name:** untitled  
 **pairing:** grantaire x jehan  
 **summary:** i have no fuckin clue honestly

One constant, that could always be found in Jehan’s apartment, was lemon handwash. One in the bathroom, one in the kitchen, a few spares shoved behind family-size packs of toilet rolls in the airing cupboard. He even had lemon showergel, posh shit Grantaire never could afford, but Jehan sort-of could (on his parent’s expenses).  
  
Jehan had never, to his knowledge, liked lemon. At ever bar, ordering a coke or something else more alcoholic, the standard mantra of “Ice and lemon?” would always be answered with a smile and, “No lemon.” (Though Jehan almost always got ice - even in that winter where everything got frozen, and they’d had to clutch at one another, slip-sliding their way to someone’s apartment. Grantaire had been drunk because snow had never stopped him, and fallen on his ass while Jehan laughed behind him, the sound muffled in his patterned scarf, and his hands on Grantaire’s shoulders.) Yet, always, some half-listening bartender would serve up ice _and_ lemon and Jehan would make a face, and scoop out the sodding lemon and look at it miserably.  
  
When Jehan had moved in to Grantaire’s lofty apartment he’d brought many things, largely books. Great stacks of books, books filling up his shelves and tucked into the nooks and crannies of rooms, books peering from behind lamps, leering over the top of a kitchen shelf, falling on Grantaire’s fucking face when he once opened his wardrobe. He bought other things of course, like actual (mismatched) cutlery and (more horrifically mismatched) dinnerware. Jehan bought DVDs, and shoes discarded randomly throughout the house, and potted plants, and the creepiest fucking ornaments Grantaire had ever seen - ever.  
  
With all this, he also brought the stupid lemon handwash. In turn, his stupid lemon showergel, as well.  
  
Until, when Grantaire was picking up groceries he was automatically putting it in the basket if he knew they were running low. Until the smell of lemon on one another’s hands, and all over Jehan’s skin, was the norm.  
  
Now, something which mocks Grantaire, in it’s yellow fucking bottle.

 

* * *

 

 

 **name:** untitled  
 **pairing:** combeferre x grantaire (some unrequited enjolras x grantaire if you squint)  
 **summary:** post-apoc thing  
 **warnings:** blood, gore, explicit violence, lots of swearing  


“Follow your fucking mark, Grantaire,” Combeferre snarls at him when he rejoins the group. He wants to laugh because if Combeferre’s swearing that means something has really jarred him, but he doesn’t.  
  
Instead, he wipes the blood from his hands onto his jeans and says, “It got the job done, didn’t it?”  
  
The stains won’t matter. There’s blood all over him, already. Though, mainly from the bodies now strewn across the floor rather than himself, which Grantaire takes as a win. Combeferre, however, is furious, win or not.  
  
“You could have died,” Combeferre tells him, like Grantaire doesn’t know that. He only says it after he sends the rest of their party back to the Musain. They’re in the safe zone now, behind the blockades - “the people’s barricade”, Enjolras’ had called it once, the righteous prick - which never for a second means they’re actually _safe_ but at least the danger is momentarily over. The rest leave them alone in the middle of a cobbled street somewhere in the wreckage of Paris, Combeferre’s hand blooming over his chest to look at blood dribbling out of an open wound.  
  
Grantaire leers at him. “And you would have cared?”  
  
“Yes,” Combeferre replies, retracting his hands because they both know Grantaire’s had a lot, lot worse (he’s also sought out a lot worse, for the thrill of the pain, and they both know that, too). “I’m not Enjolras.”  
  
Grantaire ignores that comment, but he knows exactly what it means. Grantaire understands that when they walk through the doors of the Musain, after Feuilly has briefed Enjolras’ on their mission, that Enjolras’ won’t do anything more than disdainfully say “Well done” toward Grantaire. There will be no mention about how Grantaire could easily be dead on the pavement, or how the move was stupid and risky (at least, no mention today, if he’d endangered the lives of one of their crew, however, that would be a different story). After all, Grantaire would have died for the cause. For the people. After all, Enjolras’ only takes the well-being of his precious Friends and the people into account, never Grantaire. Never once had he spared a glance for singular, drunken, murdering, fucking tired Grantaire.  
  
Grantaire has accepted this.  
  
“I don’t think you would care,” Grantaire says. “I don’t think you do. I don’t think you care at all any more, just try to so you can fucking sleep at night.”  
  
All Combeferre says back is, “Next time follow your damn mark.” His face is grim in the late evening dimness.  
  
-  
  
Combeferre and Grantaire don’t talk about a lot of things. They don’t talk about how Combeferre is the only other person than Jehan who gets to take his bottle away from him, even if the first time Grantaire had still split open Combeferre’s mouth on his fist. They don’t talk about the time Combeferre had a knife against his throat, and was gasping like a fish out of water below the man with said knife, and Grantaire had pulled the man off of Combeferre and beaten him to death because he was out of ammo. They don’t talk about how he cried afterward, fists humming, Combeferre’s hands on his cheeks.  
  
They don’t talk about how Combeferre can see every little detail of Grantaire. How he knows how Grantaire works, and almost all of his triggers, and knows, but doesn’t abuse, the things that make him smile. They don’t talk about how Grantaire can see every little detail of Combeferre. How he saw the idealist in him begin to die and the coldness set in. He knows all the things that make him smile, but won’t make use of it, because then they would have to talk about another thing they don’t talk about - the fact that they care.  
  
They don’t talk about how they met. They don’t talk about how Combeferre met Grantaire first.  
  
Grantaire was skin and bone, and on the run, and haunted by the fires of all his closest family and friends burnt to death by the bombs, hidden behind his eyes, and wild, wild, wild. He killed lots of men with his bare hands because he could until Combeferre had told him to stop. Grantaire had asked why.  
  
They don’t talk about Combeferre’s answer.  
  
(They don’t talk about the night they almost kissed in the summer when Grantaire was bleeding out on the pavement and he genuinely thought he was going to die. His hand had been curled in Combeferre’s shirt, that had been covered in Grantaire’s blood. Combeferre kept telling him he would be okay, until Grantaire had wanted him to stop, and Grantaire had wanted him to know things, and had wanted to kiss him, and Grantaire had tried to kiss him.  
  
Combeferre had said “no”, simple as that, so Grantaire hadn’t.)  
  
-  
  
Joly’s smile no longer retains the brightness it once did. It might be funny, if it wasn’t so tragic, about how the Friends of the ABC gauged some sort of happiness on the strength of Joly and Courfeyrac’s smiles. This was because Joly had always had a smile, sparking like a firework, even in the beginning when everything had turned to shit and bombs started falling and no one really knew who was fighting who except there was a war - when the ABC had been accidentally thrown together, underneath Enjolras’ greatness. This was because Courfeyrac radiated warmth and easy joviality, tying people together as much as Joly did. His smile had faded too, but somehow it was /worse/ with Joly, probably because he wasn’t such a volume of noise and words as Courfeyrac had always been, and who used that as a replacement for cheek-splitting-grins.  
  
Grantaire is morose, and silent, and he doesn’t know why he’s with these people half the time. Except now it’s become a habit he can’t get out of, an abuse of a substance as much as his relationship with alcohol. He’s dependant on these misfit heroes, even if he’s fucking worthless half the time, anyway. But being morose, and silent, and drunk to the point where people don’t bother to talk to him, makes Grantaire notice things.  
  
He soon notices how the absence of Joly’s smiles hurts Combeferre the most.  
  
Grantaire doesn’t know much about their relationship, because he doesn’t fucking ask (like none of them really ask what one another’s life was like before it all went to shit because after all, it hurts too much). Somewhere, however, he heard they knew each other /before/. That they were doctors in the same hospital, so Grantaire guesses there’s /context/ to that. Except now, Joly tries his best to stop their friends bleeding out with the rag-tag bunch of supplies they have and Combeferre does the same on the streets, because although Combeferre’s official title is doctor, also, it’s unspoken fact that he’s Enjolras’ right hand man.  
  
After all, it wouldn’t be right if an army’s general didn’t frequent the battlefield.  
  
One day he sees Combeferre’s disappointment across the table, the sombre acceptance of Joly’s brief, clipped, attempt of a smile at something Bahorel offhandedly says. So, Grantaire picks up his head, and grins, saying something drily in Joly’s ear until he’s laughing - a real, shocking sound.  
  
He does it for Combeferre, but he doesn’t look at his face when he does it.

 

* * *

 

 

 **name:** untitled  
 **pairing:** combeferre x grantaire (and some enjolras x combeferre)  
 **summary:** more band aus - combeferre as the bands ex-guitarist, grantaire as his replacement.  


The sound of Combeferre’s fingers moving over the strings Grantaire feels like he’s seventeen again. Only, the chords he’s playing are Grantaire’s chords now, even if they still don’t feel that way. The Friends of the ABC were always a different band before Combeferre left and Grantaire took his place. The chords traced out by Combeferre’s hands would always be Combeferre’s, put together back during their first EP and then, later, their first album. Grantaire just borrowed them, for those old fan favourites.  
  
Combeferre’s beautiful lent over a guitar, slender hands picking their way across the strings like they were meant to be there. His hair falls a little into his face, touching the rim of his glasses that are progressively slipping down the bridge of his nose, and his eyes are distant, in a dream. Grantaire can understand. He feels weightless with the noise, enraptured by Combeferrre’s concentration, the way passion screams from him in the tiniest of movements.  
  
When he starts singing, Grantaire doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s left breathless, staring. Combeferre’s voice is deeper than Enjolras’ and softer around the edges where Enjolras is usually sharp, each word loaded with meaning. In Combeferre’s gentler, calmer tones that meaning seems to blur. The ambiguous words of ‘1832’ seem less martyred from Combeferre’s lips, less like an accusation, more like a love song.  
  
Grantaire suddenly thinks about what it would be like to feel those lips beneath his own. To extract gasps rather than four year old lyrics.  
  
Combeferre lifts his head as the last lyric slides away and the chords peter off slowly beneath his fingers. He’s grinning, beaming from ear to ear in a way which is somehow both ecstatic and sad. The grin bunches up too much around his eyes, slightly too tight around his lips, the quiet side-effects of nostalgia. Opposite that grin, Grantaire can’t help but mimic it, although absent of melancholy.  
  
He doesn’t understand how Combeferre could have stopped. He understands the reasons, but watching Combeferre perform casts all that aside. Combeferre is breathtaking and as easily commanding as Enjolras, although it’s true the differences between them are gaping. Enjolras demands a crowd’s attention, bares his soul open - this is me and you will listen - while Combeferre earns it, eases it in, has you caught on his voice before you even realise. It feels like sacrilege, to hide that talent away.  
  
Combeferre sets the guitar down and Grantaire thinks /Fuck it/, and leans across the bed to kiss him.  
  
Combeferre’s mouth is warm and soft, at least, soft compared to Grantaire’s chapped lips. It’s not exactly tentative, but it’s slow, testing the waters, until Combeferre makes a low noise in the back of his throat that has Grantaire biting at Combeferre’s bottom lip and wanting to kiss him until it hurts. Combeferre’s hands curl into his t-shirt, and just when Grantaire goes to deepen the kiss Combeferre pushes him, very carefully, away.  
  
“Me and Enjolras dated. We kept it a secret, we were discreet, but we did.”  
  
“I- Do you-“  
  
“No, I don’t love him. Not like that, anyway. I never did, exactly, that was the whole problem. I loved him, so fucking much but it felt like a lie when I kissed him.”  
  
A flood of realisation comes over Grantaire, he rests back on the palms of his hands, eyes on Combeferre’s. “So you left.”  
  
“It was… Bad timing. I had planned to go long before our relationship began, but then I was accepted into university and, it felt right, to be honest. Maybe it was an excuse, though, I don’t know.”  
  
“Does he still-“ Half sentences never finished because Combeferre’s already there, knowing the question, knowing the answer.  
  
“I don’t know. It’s why I want to be careful. I don’t want to hurt him.”  
  
“He wrote ‘to be free’ about me, you know,” Combeferre admits, solemnly after a pause. The words seem to weigh on him heavily, and he looks older some how, more drawn, more world weary. “I said that to him once, in answer to a question. He made it into an irony - to be free of our relationship, of the band.”  
  
‘To be free’ was a song on their second album, a fan favourite that Enjolras refused to play. They got asked about it at almost every show, and it had only been played twice live. Once, when they’d first played London, second when they did their first European tour, in a crowded Paris venue, Enjolras voice a broken, beautiful violin. It was their only love song. True, often their other songs got _interpreted_ as love songs, but that was never their purpose.  
  
Enjolras did not believe in love songs.  
  
Grantaire drags in a breath, “You can’t know that.”  
  
Combeferre’s smile edges toward bitter. “I know him too well,” He counters, and the bitterness breaks, becoming warm. “Oh well,” Combeferre sighs, deflating.  



End file.
